It seems like only yesterday that I was complaining about the Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame nominees. I was 100% convinced that classic rockers Cheap Trick were going to get shut-out their first time on the ballots…but I was wrong! Not that it really matters (to quote Freddie Mercury, “nothing really matters…”) but the band was able to get into the Hall of Fame. Rather than legitimizing the band, this move only serves to legitimize the Hall. Only slightly, of course.
Anyway, the band has a new album coming out this year titled BANG ZOOM CRAZY HELLO, which is a really awful title but I’ll give the band a pass because they’re legends. The band has released a brand new song off this forthcoming album on their website. The song, which is titled “No Direction Home,” can be downloaded for the price of your email address. I would say that the song is free but as we all know, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. So, if you don’t mind getting emails from Cheap Trick, you can hear the brand new song.
Is it worth the potential spam? I think so. While “No Direction Home” is by no means the greatest Cheap Trick song of all time, it’s a pretty catchy little diddy. It’s a very Beatle-esque piece of power pop with a few ELO-like production flourishes. I really enjoyed the sugary-sweet melodies and the lyrical hook. It’s classic Cheap Trick, through and through. There’s a guitar lick that sounds very familiar to me, almost like something from an early Clapton song. I’ve been trying to work out which one for the past few days, but it has thus far eluded me. I will say that the absence of long-time drummer Bun E. Carlos is a bit of a bummer (what the hell happened there?) but I guess we can’t have everything, can we?
Anyway, if this song is any indication of the quality of the new album then we should all be really excited. Click here to download the new song.
I’m sitting at my dining room table on the Monday after the David Bowie has died and I’m trying to figure out what to write. “Heroes” is quietly seeping out of the wireless hi-fi I use to fill my house with music, and it feels both absolutely perfect and totally wrong. I think the problem is, like many people (I think), it wasn’t until he died that I gave David Bowie his proper due.
David Bowie was a rock star. David Bowie was a poet. David Bowie was an artist. David Bowie was an actor. David Bowie was a style icon. David Bowie was weird in a way that wasn’t always cool or accepted (at least initially) but he was always true to himself. When I think about all the ways he impacted me both as a rock fan and as a human being I find myself really amazed.
1976: David Bowie poses for an RCA publicity shot in 1976. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
I laugh whenever someone says “that’s freaky” because I think about the Flight of the Conchords bit where “Bowie’s in Space.” My wife and I have a private joke about her driving related to the song “Moonage Daydream.” He played Tesla in my favorite Christopher Nolan movie. How can David Bowie be so many things? Because above all else, David Bowie was a true artist who managed to find a way to stay in the mainstream and on the outer edges of culture.
The first time I heard David Bowie and knew that it was David Bowie was when I got into Queen and heard his (amazing) duet with Freddie Mercury “Under Pressure.” That he steals the show out from under one of rock’s most charismatic frontmen should be all anyone should ever need when it comes to Bowie’s rock credibility. But then there were the albums, the width and breadth of which I have only just begun to fully examine. Would you believe that I only last month sat down and listened to DIAMOND DOGS? That’s a fucking brilliant album. David Bowie has at minimum six records most rock fans consider essential.
I wrote a review of ALADDIN SANE a few years ago and to this day it’s probably my favorite Bowie album…however in recent years I’ve started to reconsider HUNKY DORY. And then there’s ZIGGY STARDUST to re-evaluate and reconsider. The man’s catalogue is so expansive, I could spend the next few years just exploring his music. And I probably will. Last week, on his 69th birthday, David Bowie released his final album BLACKSTAR. I’ve only heard the title track, and even though it’s really freaky-man (ha!) I feel like I owe it to Bowie now that he’s gone to dive fully into his last album. Weird space jazz? Just another page in the book of Bowie.
Due to a bout of chronic laziness, I haven’t done a Best of The Year list in many years. That said, had I mustered the will to create a Best of 2015 Beach Slang’s debut album THE THINGS WE DO TO FIND PEOPLE WHO FEEL LIKE US wouldn’t have been at the top spot…which would have been a major error on my part. How did I miss the best album of 2015?
I hadn’t heard of Beach Slang until last week, but already they are one of my new favorite bands. Based out of Philadelphia, Beach Slang is yet another indie band that has a Beach/Surfer-themed name despite not playing surf music or having come from a sunny beach city*. I first noticed this trend a few years ago when Wavves and Surfer Blood first hit the scene. As I’ve grown as a music fan, I’ve tried to move away from pre-judging bands based on names and album artwork, to varying degress of success. Beach Slang nearly lost me because their album’s overall package screams “look at me, I’m indie.” The album’s super lengthy, Arctic Monkey’s-esque, title is a little too cute and the faded layered-exposure cover photo is a bit too twee. But that’s all superficial, the music is what matters, and Beach Slang’s music is awesome. The album is 10 songs long and clocks-in under 27 minutes in length. This is a highly potent, distilled album.
I liken Beach Slang’s sound to mid-period Replacements meets Ryan Adams. THE THINGS WE DO… has a very late ‘80s, washed-out, sound that I normally don’t care for but with this band and these songs the aesthetic totally works. Rather than coming across as an affectation, the production compliments the rough-and-tumble punk quality of Beach Slang’s music. The guitars screech and wail in a thick cloud that hangs over the majority of the record. Lead singer James Alex’s voice is absolutely perfect with its ragged timber and earnestness. THE THINGS WE DO… tackles some very serious material and without a sincere vocalist to anchor everything down Beach Slang might have drifted into cliché. But when he Alex spits out the lyrics, the listener absolutely believes that he’s this tough punk kid and we are privy to his inner most thoughts. Musically Beach Slang are a well-oiled machine, and I’ll bet these guys are pretty damn incredible live. I hope I get to find out. The guitars stand out, but the drums are also very memorable, too (see the end of “Dirty Lights”). I wanted to establish in this review that the production and guitars are top notch on this record before tackling the lyrics to the songs on this record.
The lyrics. A surface-level, initial listen of THE THINGS WE DO… piqued my interest in this band, but it wasn’t until I put the headphones on and started listening that this record truly impressed me. Lyrically, Beach Slang’s songs are some of the best rock poetry I’ve heard in the past 10 years. There are lines in these songs that should be framed and hung on a fucking wall. That’s how good they are. Every time I hear this record I pick up on a new lyric that blows me away. That’s part of the reason it’s taken me so long to review this album—just as soon as I think I’ve discovered everything cool about THE THINGS WE DO… something else pops out of nowhere and surprises me.
Probably the one line that every review of this album must include is from “Ride the Wild Haze” wherein Alex sings “I feel most alive when I’m listening to every record that hits harder than the pain.” I’ve noticed that this is the song lyric that all the music critics are picking up on, and with good reason. It’s a damn good line and it’s essentially the central thesis of THE THINGS WE DO… Life is fucked up and sometimes it’s only art that can get us through the really hard times. The sentiment is continued in “Too Late To Die Young” wherein Alex sings: “The punks are wired and there records feel tough. It’s loud and wild, but I swear it feels soft. Yeah, it’s always been enough.” On another (really kick ass) track “I Break Guitars”, Alex asks, “If rock and roll is dangerous, how come I feel so safe in it?” For Beach Slang, rock music isn’t a phase or a way to pick up chicks; it’s a way of life. It’s also the one thing that consistently keeps them hanging on in an otherwise hard life.
Look, I get that none of this is very original. There have been punks singing about how they feel like outcasts and rock music is the only thing keeping them sane since the dawn of rock ‘n roll. This stuff shouldn’t impress me, but it does because while the sentiment may not be new, Beach Slang expresses it so eloquently. Also, don’t get me wrong, there is more going on in the brief running time of THE THINGS WE DO… than just the standard life’s hard and we are getting by through punk motif. There are songs on that really pack an emotional punch that have nothing to do with art saving one’s soul, like “Porno Love.” The song has really simple lyrics, but man do work: “California’s full of porno love, lunatics and liars and kids like us. We took a lot of time but not enough drugs. It’s heaven, It’s heaven.”
It’s rare for me to love an album from top-to-bottom these days, but I love THE THINGS WE DO TO FIND PEOPLE WHO FEEL LIKE US**. Every single track has had a turn as my favorite track. I knew that there was something special about this album when I gave it a first listen and I fell in love with “Hard Luck Kid.” I was only half-listening, browsing the Internet or something and this song kicked my ass. I remember thinking wow, there might be something to this band after all. I glanced at my Spotify playlist and saw that the album was practically over. In my experience, bands don’t usually put their best stuff at the tail end of their albums. In fact, most modern records are very top-heavy with all of the best stuff packed in at the beginning. The fact that I fell hard for a song near the very end forced me to go back and re-listen to what I’d missed. “Hard Luck Kid” very much reminds me of The Replacements “Bastards of the Young.” And as far as I’m concerned, I can’t think of a higher compliment for any band, but especially for a band like Beach Slang.
Downsides to this album? I’m a fan of quick and dirty rock, but the short running time is a bit of a bummer. I’ve gone running with this album and I’m always forced to re-start it at least once due to how short it is. But that’s also a pretty big compliment: as soon as THE THINGS WE DO… is over I’m 100% ready to jump back to the beginning to listen again. The opening track “Throwaways” is also a bit of a throwaway, in that it’s really not the best track on the album. If anyone reading this finds themselves intrigued and wants to listen to this amazing album, please stick it out to the very end.
There is a smattering of songs from an EP on Soundcloud that I’ve heard from Beach Slang and they measure up to the quality found on their debut, which is a really good sign. I selfishly hope that they are cooking up their next record (for immediate release, naturally). Right now the band is touring Europe, which is rad and all…but they need to play a city near me soon. THE THINGS WE DO TO FIND PEOPLE WHO FEEL LIKE US is hands-down the best album I’ve heard from 2015. It’s a classic album I can totally see myself revisiting in the years to come.
*Okay, so perhaps that’s not entirely true. The second track “Bad Art & Weirdo Ideas” does have a dreamy surf rock-like guitar vibe drifting through most of the track.
**And when I do find myself liking an album from top-to-bottom, it’s usually an older album that I missed. Everybody knows that the album is a dead art form, so I’m probably wasting everyone’s time pointing all of this out. Sorry.
Defending Axl Rose 